deadmau5 claims wearing his mouse helmet has caused a "spinal injury"

deadmau5 has jokingly claimed that his iconic mouse headpiece may have caused a spinal injury.

The DJ and producer, real name Joel Zimmerman, shared an x-ray image of his spine on instagram yesterday (December 7) captioning the post: “'Wear a mouse head' they said. 'It'll be fun!' They said.”

He has since confirmed in a separate post that his neck issue has probably been caused by "sleeping like an idiot, or slouching behind a computer.”

Deadmau5 adds: “My neck is fine ish, I just need to straighten my shit up. it's all good. Just sore. RELAX! we good.”

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As part of the duo Kx5 with Kaskade, deadmau5 appeared on morning news channel KTLA where he said: “I’m going back to my chiropractor tonight actually for some X-rays.”

“It looks heavy, it looks like it would hurt,” TV presenter Lu Parker said, to which he replied: “a few doctors would agree.”

Known as the ‘mau5head’, the iconic headgear was first used by the artist in 2008 with his set at Nova Scotia.

Since then, he has performed wearing it across the world and the design of the mouse has morphed with LED lights and different colours.

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Last year, deadmau5 hinted at his retirement from music on Reddit commenting that he is in his “musical sunset years” and that he will “respectfully hand down the reigns and soon hang up the mau5head”.

“I don’t think there needs to be a negative connotation tied to the idea of me starting to slow things down and head into different ventures that fill the void that music no longer does for me,” he wrote.

Check out deadmau5's X-ray below.

This article was updated to include a follow up post from deadmau5.

Becky Buckle is Mixmag's Video and Editorial Assistant, follow her on Twitter